Do you continue to use your smartphone more than it is good for you?

The word, "Brain Rot", directly defined as "the supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state from excessive smartphone use", has been chosen as the Oxford Word of the Year for 2024. [1] It seems that in some ways humans are becoming weaker from having access to unlimited time on smartphones. They have brought us constant development and convenience over the past few years, but they have also led to  various problems regarding health damage from overuse. While many of us know the consequences of using smartphones, we still tend to spend excessive time on it anyways. In 2023, a survey conducted by Pew Research Center reported that 46% of American teenagers are chronically online. [2] The key takeaway from this is that it is now common for people of any age to be overly dependent on the digital world. But why is this the case, and why do we continue to use our smartphones more than is good for us?

The first challenge to answering this question is having a clear sense of  what "good for you" means. In The Republic, Plato argued that souls consist of three components, each of which drives action - Reason, Spirit, and Appetite. Each part involves desire for different things. [3] "Reason" is our desire for truth, wisdom, and rational understanding, while "Spirit" is our desire for honor, pride, and justice. The last part, "Appetite", is our desire for  food, drink, sleep, comfort, money, and pleasure. Plato argues that to act in a virtuous way so as to live a good life, we must find balance between these desires by nurturing them equally. Using something more than is “good for you” involves overfeeding one of these components of spirit. 

Mindless “doom scrolling” serves to over nurture our “appetite”, undermining both our “spirit” and “reason”, leading us to choose bad actions or to undertake no action at all. As people get addicted, the "Appetite" starts overpowering "Reason", leading them to continuously commit harmful actions, even at times they know the consequences outweigh the positive consequences. Such individuals are failing to live a virtuous life as they continuously fail to nurture their “reason”, fuelling their addiction and making their negative behaviours progressively more damaging. 

Humans are beings that strive and look for a successful life, but when they decide to prioritize immediate pleasure over right reasoning, we make harmful choices for ourselves, even when knowing it's wrong. To give an example, a student might have an assignment that is due only in a matter of days, but they decide to leave it until the last minute because they're choosing what they want to do that second over what they're meant to be doing. We seem to be giving up the long term benefits so that we can enjoy the pleasure at the moment, leading to a disordered soul. 

What is particularly strange about smartphone use is that it is often pleasurable in the traditional sense. Plato’s concept of “appetite” likely referred to the over engagement of pleasure seeking activities like eating, drinking or dancing. Smartphones aren’t always like this though. They occasionally offer humorous or thought-provoking content, but “doom scrolling” often involves no pleasure at all. Smartphones are particularly insidious as they prey upon the expectation of pleasure, not the pleasure itself. They achieve this through farming dopamine. 

As we use smartphones, our body releases dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical in the brain that plays a very important role in our rewarding system. [4] Dopamine is the cause of the disordered soul as it tricks the soul into engaging in actions that only appear to be virtuous or pleasurable. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that triggers motivation, anticipation, and reward-seeking behaviors. It is typically released when a person expects to achieve a goal or attain some pleasure. Individuals with low dopamine find themselves less motivated, and individuals with higher dopamine find themselves more motivated. Critically, this chemical does not directly correlate with pleasure or the satisfaction gained from completing a task, only with a motivation to seek further pleasure and rewards. Many smartphone apps are principally designed to exploit this system which is why they are so pernicious. [5]

Every time we see a funny video, or someone likes your post, we get a huge surge of dopamine. Like any other activity that helps us to get dopamine, such as reading or writing, dopamine is good, but it's only good when we consume it the correct way. Various scientists such as Andrew Huberman had said that dopamine is more about "wanting" than "liking", and unlike what many of us mistake it as, it is more of the anticipation for the reward rather than the reward itself. The anticipation helps us with feeling as though pleasure and satisfaction will come, but as this never does. 

When using smartphones, the immediate high peak of dopamine will trigger the brain system into creating an unsteady dopamine level. This leads to individuals finding their daily lives rather boring, and they find it difficult to find activities that give them pleasure other than scrolling on the internet. While normal activities are enough to give one pleasure, the brain starts to only want stronger and faster rewards. It will start to interfere with your day-to-day life. Because of how rewarding phones are, people believe that their normal tasks are not rewarding enough to keep them motivated throughout the day. [This can be the cause of people starting to forcefully find excitement to get the same amount of satisfaction they get from going online. 

Plato's disordered soul describes that a person is disordered when they seek immediate satisfaction rather than balancing it out with orderly reasoning. However, people spending too much time on smartphones are placed in an even worse state than the "disordered" person. While Plato's disordered person is guilty of enjoying too much, spending hours on the internet doesn't even give one satisfaction, as it not only causes us to engage in pleasure seeking activities but we don't even get the pleasure in the first place. To Plato, over seeking pleasure was enough to cause an unbalanced soul. The lack of satisfaction from dopamine farming causes a person to engage in an even more extreme set of pleasure seeking behaviours as the user is never truly satisfied. 

However, in current society, we can't simply justify that people are getting addicted to phones because of their weakness of will. Philosopher Albert Borgmann argues that technology has changed the structure of human life. He claims that while in the past, humans had managed to stay active in the world through effort and engagement, now, people can use their smartphones and the outcome will be delivered to them instantly. This structure itself weakens one's self control. People like children and teenagers, whose brain is still growing, are especially vulnerable to the side effects of addiction compared to adults. Therefore, smartphone addiction isn't merely because of the lack of one's willpower, but more because of the structure that makes humans even more fragile than they already are. Then are humans constantly getting manipulated by technology? Not really. Even though smartphones are meant to be addictive, it is on us to choose our next actions. Aristotle once said, "Knowledge is not only knowing something, but having the power to act upon it." If we know what is harmful to us, then we should begin regulating ourselves. Technology may put us at a vulnerable state, but humans are still more than capable of controlling technology, not the other way around.

Ultimately, we as humans have to fight against these two forces - first, the impulse to yearn and chase after instant pleasure, and second, the passively structured modern world. Yet again, while the form of the media might cause us to become more vulnerable to it than necessary, that doesn't mean we have to let ourselves stay that way. If we know the triggers that are making us vulnerable, then we should start taking time away from the screen, and avoid the things that are causing us to become disorderly. This doesn't mean that it's best if you distance yourself from your phone all the time, or you throw it away. Phones have given us convenience over the past few years, and the world is revolving better at a faster pace thanks to it. However, we have to constantly question ourselves if we're using them in an appropriate way, what benefit we can get from it, and if it is a good idea to invest your time on it at the moment. We have to quickly analyze our situation, make a decision, and remember our goal. Plato told us what being a truly good person means. Controlling oneself is the key to becoming a balanced person. This therefore concludes that we should not only consider why we use our smartphones more than it is good for us, but what we're going to make out of ourselves every day. We need to ask ourselves what type of person we want to become in the end.

Bibliography

[1] "'Brain rot' named Oxford Word of the Year 2024", Oxford University Press, December 2, 2024

[2] "Teens, Social Media and Technology 2023", Pew Research Center, December 11, 2023

[3] "The Republic", Plato

[4] "Reward system", Wikipedia

[5] "Dopamine Reward Prediction Error Coding", National Library of Medicine, PubMed Central, March 18, 2016

[6] "Technology and the Inadequacy of Values Talk", L.M. Sacsas, April 5, 2019

[7] "Nicomachean Ethics", Wikipedia

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